On Belus, he used the sound of a hammer striking an anvil.
On the release of Fallen, he used a slow motion recording of a water boiler in use.

"Filosofem" was recorded under purposefully bad conditions. No guitar amplifier was used, Varg plugged his guitar into the amplifier of his brother's stereo and used an old fuzz pedal. He also asked a sound technician for the worst microphone he had and ended up using a headset as the microphone.

Vikernes suggests that "Belus" is "the so-called Indo-European name for Baldur/the White God", a purported life-death-rebirth deity that Vikernes sees reflected in Greek Apollo, Norse Baldur, Gaulish Belenus, and Slavic Belobog and Jarilo, among others.

Det som engang var (Norwegian for What Once Was) album cover is inspired by a Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1st edition) module called The Temple of Elemental Evil. At the bottom of the artwork is a depiction of the "reaper" and the tree shown on Burzum's first album. The album was initially titled På svarte troner (Norwegian for On Black Thrones) but was retitled before its release.

From 1989, Vikernes had been playing in the short lived band Old Funeral which also consisted of members who would later form the band Immortal. He played guitar in the band until 1991 when he left to form his one man band, Burzum.

Varg was born Kristian Vikernes but legally changed his first name to Varg in 1993. Varg means "wolf" in both Swedish and Norwegian.

Euronymous made a mistake in the track list of Burzum's self-titled debut and typed up "Ea, Lord Of The Deeps" instead of "Ea, Lord Of The Depths". Also in the lyrics for "Feeble Screams From Forests Unknown" he typed up "The Hopeless Soul Keeps Waiting" instead of "The Hopeless Soul Keeps Mating". And in "My Journey To The Stars" (in the first line) "I materialize..." instead of "I immaterialize...".

Drummer Erik "AiwarikiaR" Lancelot never recorded anything with Burzum. But he was in the band for a short time, in an attempt by Varg to transform Burzum into a live band. After a few weeks of rehearsals, Vikernes regretted the idea and abandoned it before ever actually performing live. This occurred after the release of the "Aske" EP.

A section of the song 'Rundtgåing Av Den Transcendentale Egenhetens Støtte' from the album 'Filosofem' appeared as a soundtrack for the film Gummo.

Count Grishnakh, Varg Vikernes' stage name for a period of time, is taken from an Orc/Uruk in "The Lord Of The Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien. Grishnákh led a group of orcs under Sauron's dominion that joined Uglúk's Uruk troop on the plains of Rohan.

The painting "Tirilil Tove" which is on the cover of the album "Filosofem" is referring to the fairy tale of a shepherdess who daunts the wolves and the evil spirits away from her sheep, with her improvised flute.

Varg murdered Mayhem's guitarist/founder Euronymous in 1993, and has supposedly taken part in church burnings along with Emperor's guitarist Samoth. He had been serving a prison sentence since then until being released in 2009. There he continued to create music with a synthesizer, since they don't allow other instruments in prison.

The band name was originally "Uruk-Hai" but was changed to "Burzum" in 1991. "Burzum" means "Darkness" in Black Speech, the language created by Sauron, in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" book series.